The visual draw of your professional report comes together with the “beautification” you apply to the content. Formatting is also an essential step for a document that flows well. So, you must focus a lot of energy on picking the right font, paragraph space, and the colors.

Use the strategies of investigative writing to get the ball rolling. Answer the questions: Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How. Are you addressing a quality assurance team about a change in a project deadline or coworkers about an office party announcement? Why is the subject of your memo or report important? If you`re addressing an issue, how do you intend to solve it? What is your call to action - how do you want readers to respond? Once you`ve nailed down some solid responses, you`re ready to fill in the blanks.

Once you have your structure, write down the headings and start to fill these in with the information you have gathered so far. By now you should be able to draft the terms of reference, procedure and findings, and start to work out what will go in the report’s appendix.

Professional report writing needs a different set of skills. So, ask yourself this — can you make the leap from a single document to a lengthy report? Do you know all the Microsoft Word features that will help manage this large scale document project? Can you collaborate on the work with other team members?

You may be a student, a small business owner, or an office worker…you will need to create a report or a professionally formatted document of some kind.